Bulk Management Tools

Welcome to the only add-on you need to convert your GeoTheme from hobby, to moneymaking machine. This script gives you the power to quickly upload purchased or created Geo listing databases and control all of your places and events, friction-free.

GT Bulk Management Tools gives you the ability you to export all of your place and event listings and related data as a .CSV file and import the fie into your favorite spreadsheet software for editing. Once you have altered your listings offline, simply save/export the CSV and import it with the Bulk Management Tools Importer. All of your places and events will be updated.

Installation:

1. Unzip the script archive and upload the four .php files to your GeoTheme theme root folder (not your child theme)
2. Create four new pages in WordPress called download, download events, upload and upload events
3. Give each new page the corresponding template from the templates drop-down while editing the page. (The download page gets the “download” template, etc.)
4. Make the pages private, so only you can view them 5. That’s it

USAGE:

Downloading a CSV - (sign in as an admin of your site) 1. Visit the URL of on of the newly created download pages (to find the exact URL, you can use “view page” from the edit screen of the corresponding page in wp-admin) 2. Here you can see a table of all of your listings 3. Click “Download CSV” in the top menu and select a download destination

Uploading a CSV - 1. Make sure the CSV to be uploaded is formatted exactly the same as a CSV downloaded with this tool and has the same headers. Your best option is to use the downloaded CSV as a template for your upload. Note – do not try to use GT’s default bulk import template. 2. Visit the URL of one of the newly created upload pages (to find the exact URL, you can use “view page” from the edit screen of the corresponding page in wp-admin) 3. Click “Upload CSV” and select your CSV file from your computer.
4. If you would like to simulate the uploaded changes first, check the simulate box, then submit. Note – if you simulate first, you will have to scroll to the bottom of the page and select your CSV again when you are ready to do the real upload.

OTHER NOTES:

- BACKUP your entire WP database and be confident restoring it quickly before using the script. Any bulk database editor is an easy way to screw up your site badly and quickly.
- The upload script uses the place ID column as the reference column for updating listings. Uploading a row/place without an ID will cause a new listing to be created.
- The creators of the script are not responsible for any data loss or damage caused by using this script. Use the script at your own risk. Using the script can result in dataloss or database corruption.
- (NEW) Entering a sub-category in the category field of a place in your CSV will cause the upload script to add all parent, grandparent, etc categories to that place. This is how GeoTheme expects places to be added and relies on places being part of the entire place hierarchy in order to be sorted and displayed correctly.

CHANGE LOG:

v1.1.7
Fixed place upload bug that cause erroneous data to be uploaded in some cases

v1.1.5
Changed how categories are handled on upload. The script now acts the same way as the “add place” page of GeoThemes. Now, when you upload a place that you have only given a sub-category, the script will automatically assign all parent categories of that sub-category to the place. This is important because, only listing a place in a sub-category breaks pagination and creates empty parent categories.

v1.1.4
Added support for importing and exporting of GeoTheme events (first implementation, be extra careful)
Fixed multiple category bug again. Now multiple categories can be imported, but must be separated by a comma (not a % as previously updated).
Updated description to reflect that script can now manage events

v1.1.3
Fixed comment disabling on import. Added new option for comments=closed or open and set default to open
Fixed multiple category bug. Now multiple categories can be imported, but must be separated by a % symbol
Updated description to reflect that script can only export/import places right now, not events

v1.1.2 GT3+ compatible! Added support for country, region, state and neighborhood Fixed permalink dependencies Fixed static URL issues Updated documentation right here where you are reading

Hi there. I have not tested with 3.x, but I am hoping it works as-is. I’ll do some testing next week and post an update here. Sorry for the delayed responses btw. For whatever reason, I seem to only get notified of everty 1 in 4 comments here. I did not setup a Demo, so I am not sure what was not working. Thanks for the heads up though, I’ll take a look at the product’s profile and see if I can figure that out.

Hi there,
Thanks for the purchase. Sorry you’re having issues, we should be able to get this working right away. First things first, is the page you created set to private (it should be for security’s sake)? If so, are you signed in as an admin when you are getting the 404 error? I spent an incredibly frustrating night trying to solve a similar 404 error, only to figure out, the next morning, that the error was because I wasn’t signed in to my site and the page was private.
If that does not take care of it, please send the URL my way (jaxon.klein@gmail.com) and I’ll have a look.
Thanks,
Jackson

As I mentioned above, the plugin is still supported and I am trying to be responsive here, but comment notifications don’t seem to make it to my inbox most of the time. So, sorry about the delays and please feel free to email me directly at jaxon.klein@gmail.com

Hi Hemand,
Were you able to resolve the memory error? Also, we just released an update that took care of a couple bugs.
If you have any questions, please just post them here and we’ll see what we can do.
Thanks,
Jackson

As I mentioned above, the plugin is still supported and I am trying to be responsive here, but comment notifications don’t seem to make it to my inbox most of the time. So, sorry about the delays and please feel free to email me directly at jaxon.klein@gmail.com

Hmmm… I haven’t run into a memory error before. I believe that the message is just a run-of-the-mill WP memory error though. Here is a link to WP’s instructions for boosting the memory. This definitely has not worked 100% of the time for me though. If I remember correctly there are also some solutions that use php.ini files and I am almost positive that there are some plugins that will automate the whole thing for you. The reality is that the php memory can/is throttled at a server level no matter what. You can ask your tech-support about the issue also and see what they have to say.
Here’s the link:http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php#Increasing_memory_allocated_to_PHP
If none of this helps, just send a note and we’ll see what we can figure out.
Jackson

Glad to hear it is all working well for you so far. We built the scripts out of necessity and they have been huge time-savers for us.

Regarding the upload script, we just found a small bug yesterday that was preventing the address field from being uploaded in some situations. I believe the only issue was that if you downloaded a CSV, then re-uploaded a file with the exact same headers, the address field header used a capital letter in the download and was looking for a lowercase for the upload (could be the opposite – cannot remember).

In any case, we are fixing it up today and will release an update this evening. If anyone is using the upload script in the mean time and running into this issue, try just changing the address field from “address -> Address” or the other way around. And REMEMBER, ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR DATABASE BEFORE RUNNING THIS SCRIPT.

Hi there Chris,
We’re still working on this fix. Hoping to have it out tomorrow with v1.2. Then another update mid next week with support for new geographic features in v3 and full v3 compatibility.
Thanks for your patience,
Jackson

Hi again Dave,
We will be releasing an update with the upload bug fixed over the next 48 hours. We are also working on an update for full GTv3 compatibility and support for the new geographic fields, but that will not be released until mid next week.
Thanks for your patience,
Jackson

Hi Stroudsco,
What permalink setting are you using. Some users have been running into issues based on their permalink settings. Please try temporarily setting your permalinks to “default” in WP and refreshing the upload page a few times.
Thanks,
Jackson

I think there is an error in the version you are using. Please open upload.php and edit line 17 to read:
$redirecturl = get_site_url().”/download/”;
Please report back with your results, as this may be helpful for other folks. Also, we are working on the update for GT3+ and should have it ready by the end of the week or weekend.
Thanks,
Jackson

Thanks for trying Stroudsco,
I definitely don’t like going in and changing code and the such on purchased scripts either and respect that. My apologies. Please stick with me here though. We have this exact script working on a good handful of sites without issue, but I am happy to work through all these issues with you and continue to offer quick and personal support.
Thanks again,
Jackson

I hope not, because, as per the instructions, anyone using the script should have made the upload and download pages private and thus you would need to be signed in in order to pull the data. Worth a bit of experimentation on our end though.
Thanks,
Jackson

Yep, you got the pages right I believe. Try visiting yourURL.com/upload instead of using the button. It is possible that the buttons are part of the issue.
I will be around later. Just drop me an email with login credentials and your URL and I will see what I can do.
Thanks,
Jackson

Hey there Stroudsco and everyone else,
This is just a quick update on the update status. We ran into a couple of small issues in getting the public release prepared, but are moving forward again and should have it ready tonight or tomorrow.
I am extremely sorry for all the waiting and honestly, as a real person, who has been on both sides of these waits, thank you all very much for your patience and for being nice about this. We will all have a working version soon and be able to bulk-edit GT to our hearts’ content.
Warm regards,
jackson

Hi there Deejay,
Thanks for the purchase and for getting in touch. The templates are created when you upload download.php and upload.php to your GT’s root folder. Have you done that already?
Also, we are about to release an updated version for GT3+, as the current version has a number of known compatibility issues. So please do give the current version a shot, but most likely, you will need to wait for the new release in order to have a fully functional script. That release should have been yesterday, but we ran into a couple last issues in getting the public release ready. Hopefully today or tomorrow it will be out in the wild.
Thanks again,
Jackson

PS if you or anyone else here has questions, please just post them here and I’ll respond right away.

Hey there Dave,
Did it mess up your DB? I definitely haven’t had any corrupted DB’s yet, but maybe something else came up. If so, please do send some specifics on what happened to the DB if you get a chance, so we can make sure there is not broader issue. jackson@reneweb.net
Thanks a lot!
Jackson

I think it had to do with the import of the 600 or so restaurants which uploaded but were not on the wp dashboard, I then had problems with the images and some stories I think that might be down to me changing the permalinks.

it wasn’t a problem as were only really going live tomorrow, but now i have 10,000 listings so we do need your bulk software

Okay, that all sounds pretty run-of-the-mill… Really though, the mexican restaurant thing I am pretty sure is just this… that there was a static URL for our testing left in the upload.php file and it was part of a redirect, so after running your uploaded, you were redirected to our test site rather than to your own site and you would have been looking at our list of Ecuadorian restaurants (which was not a private page at the time because we had a number of devs accessing it. Anyway, as far as I understand the problem, none of that should have ended up in your DB – you were basically just uploading your stuff, then being redirected to a results page on our site rather than yours.

Regarding the 10,000 listings, you are KILLING me… this is exactly why we made this script in the first place and now it’s not working for the exact situations in which it is needed. Ahhrg…

We’re working hard to get it done and out. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks for following up about the DB stuff.
Jackson

Hi there folks,
Just wanted to send a quick update out. We are finishing up testing right now and things are looking great. I hoping to have the GT3+ compatible version up on TT by early-afternoon.
Thanks for your patience!
Jackson

Hi there folks,
We have been working on this all day and as we were finalizing everything, found a bug with child themes. We have been troubleshooting for the last couple hours and I am really hoping that we are just a few hours from getting it posted here.
I’ll keep you all updated,
jackson

Just submitted the update for approval by TT. We also submitted a version last night, that still had a lingering bug. We have since got that one ironed out as well.

I also updated the documentation on this page a bit. Hopefully installation and usage will be a bit more clear now.
As always, please go ahead and post any questions, feedback or just “it works” here and I will be happy to help out/respond.

Hi everyone,
We’ve already uncovered at least one bug in the new release. The issue occurs when downloading and re-uploading your database. On upload, comments are “turned off” for all posts. Turning comments on and off was not a feature we had included originally, but it seems like the easiest way to take care of this is to just add it as a bulk editable field. We have one report of a default city being deleted and off some images being misorganized – we have not verified either of these yet.
As always, please BACKUP your database before using this script. We are not responsible for any data-loss, etc that results from the use of this script.
The faster we track down any bugs like this, the quicker we can get it fixed up, so please do post any issues you encounter right away.
We are working on checking and fixing these issues this morning and will hopefully find some solutions by tonight.
Jackson

Hi Jackson,
How can I know which version I have downloaded.
TT says on my download panel v1.1 (there again, the date of all posts is Jan 12th 2012).
The date of the file is 9th May – but I think this is also incorrect.

Could you include a change-log – or txt file in the download so I can be sure I have the latest?
Thanks, looking forward to the bug-free version. Thanks for all your work on it!

Regarding your first note, that’s a very good idea. From this point on, I will include a .txt with the documentation and version number in the .zip. Regarding your specific download, if you downloaded today or yesterday after mid-morning, you are using the current version. If you downloaded yesterday and are not positive, I’d recommend just downloading it again. And yes, the dates here on TT or pretty worthless right now. Kind of ironic really, but I don’t fault the guys, they’ve bitten off a lot with these projects.

Lastly, the scripts are only tested for places at this point, not events. Adding support for events is on the roadmap though, but we have lots of stuff to do for places before we get to that point. Once we are attacking this one, I am sure that place/event associations will be part of the release.

To everyone using this script,
We have identified two definite bugs with the current version. First, that comments are turned off by default for all uploaded places. Second, that the upload process is not retaining more than one post category. We should have these issues dialed in and a new version out this evening.
Happy Friday!
Jackson

Hi there Peter,
This script is for bulk editing your GeoTheme places and all related meta-data. It is especially useful if you are trying to add a whole database of places or just want to be able to quickly edit your places database in Excel, Numbers, etc., rather than clicking through the WordPress’s graphic interface to change hundreds or thousands of posts.
If you need to export your entire WP database, there are a ton of plugins and server-side scripts that will do just that for you, but most of those will provide a limited ability to edit the database as a CSV or to easily edit only places and GeoTheme info.
If you have any other questions at all, please post them here and I will be happy to chat.
Thanks,
Jackson

Hi Jackson,
“This is a time-saving script that allows GeoTheme users to export ALL OF THEIR LISTINGS and related meta fields as a .CSV file….”

The plugin I wanted to use to export events from GT. I need a tool for quick export (every week) all the events in my GT for newspaper printing. But I need to export entries (date, start, end, etc …) as standard plug-ins do not know. I installed this plugin, and I found that makes the place only.

Funny, that was not our intention at all with the wording, but of course, now that you mention it like that, it makes perfect sense that this should work for places and events. Thanks for bringing that to the light:)

So, this seems like a good addition to the script to me. The other bug fixes are complete and I’m going to do a bit of final testing this morning and post them here. Once that is up and bug-free, it seems like a logical next step would be to add support for events – especially since using this like you mentioned, with a newspaper or other media outlet, could be very valuable.

Just to make sure we do it right though, I would love to hear a bit of feedback on what fields you (or anyone else) think should be included in the import/export of events.
Here is what I have so far:
id
date added
title
description
post category
post tags
post type(?)
package id
video code
address
map zoom level
map lat
map long
timing info
contact info
email address
website
twitter
Facebook
is featured
special offer
paid amount
payment method
alive days
city id
image 1
image 2
image 3
image 4
image 5
comments enabled
permalink

It does not seem like the new geo regions (state, neighborhood, etc) can be assigned to events, but maybe I am missing something there. Any other ideas?

It’s good Dave,
Good hearing from you and hope you had a great weekend. We didn’t get to put much time in on this over the weekend, but are back at it right now. We should have the the next version out tonight or tomorrow. I’ll do a lot of testing and hopefully folks here will test and report back also. As everyone has different plugins installed and different server-side softwares, etc., we can only test so thoroughly, before we just need folks to give it a spin.
If you are savvy and feel like it, setting up a second installation of GT as a “sandbox” for testing new plugins and scripts before putting them on your live site might save you time and heartache in the future.
I’ll be in touch,
Jackson

Hi folks,
Just wanted to let you know that I am about to submit v1.1.2 for TT approval. The page goes down briefly during approval. Once it is ready, do read through the change log please.
Also, we have already begun coding support for Events! Exciting stuff.
Thanks,
Jackson

Thanks for the update and look forward to hearing how it goes. Regarding Excel, I never know exactly what those errors mean, but I also have never had “compatibility” issues with a CSV exported in that fashion. Maybe someone else can chime in, but my best guess is that Excel would prefer to be storing multiple pages/sheets and other information about the project and all you want is a CSV, which cannot accept any of that extra fluff that Excel wants to give it… Again, don’t quote me on that, but I in my experience, the error has never presented a problem.

As far as I know, Excel does that to warn that certain content will not get saved when a csv (rather than an xls).
For example – you spend hours making your xls look nice (colours / outlines to cells, etc) – you save as a CSV and all this is lost.
Not certain what else is not saved – but as far as I know the actual data is fine – though sometimes accents and umlauts are lost.

Thanks for that Chris. That’s what I was trying to explain with the “fluff”, but your description was much more useful.
Interesting about the accents and umlauts though, that is a good note to file away in case anyone finds themselves missing accents in the future.
Chris, have you had a chance to test out v1.1.2 yet? If so, were things working as expected?
Thanks,
Jackson

Not had chance to test yet – hopefully this weekend.
Accents, sometimes they also corrupt (rather than go missing) – seems especially German / Spanish accents, maybe worth running a few tests as I imagine this will crop up for a number of users.

Just some advice, I would say DO NOT use excel to save this file before upload.

Having worked with these databases for months across both PC and MAC, its easiest to use excel to do all your changes on screen then save from excel as csv as normal – Then open in a text editor, I use ‘TEXTWRANGLER’ for MAC and just save again, weird I know but something to do with excel and commas I think.

Maybe someone will help.
Excel seems to me, overly careful (?) by user. Therefore, for these things, i prefer OpenOffice.Calc. Another control CSV file, i go through PSPad editor. These tools are free. Anyway, PSPad editor is interesting and useful tool. http://www.pspad.com/en/screenshot.htm

Sorry to hear you are having issues. Could you please explain what the specific problem is? Dropped characters, dropped places, php error, etc. Also what version of GT and GTbmt are you using and maybe most importantly, what program are you exporting/saving the CSV in for upload?

Thanks for the quick response, it was an easy fix in the end, by uploading the spreadsheet to Google Spreadsheet and then exporting/saving back to the desktop I was able to upload the Spanish character set without any issue

Over the last couple of day, I’ve been working with the uploader and I’ve come into a few more difficulties/questions:

What do the customfields do, they don’t seem to make any changes to the front end?

For coordinates do these need to be manually inserted for every listing or is it possible that the address could update this automatically?

Is it possible to upload ‘special offers’, as there doesn’t seem to be a column for that?

Post categories – when I download listings which have more than 1 category it only downloads the first category per listing. Therefore if you download and then upload all listings (when doing an update) you reduce all your listings to having a single category. All my listings have multiple categories so this is a problem for me. Is there a way around having to ad all the categories back on manually?

My listing has one image only. Each time I make an update it duplicates the one image I have for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th image etc. Now when I try to change the image through the uploaded it doesn’t allow updates on the image columns, do you know why this might be happening?

I’m running it on a test site at http://visitacity.co.uk/ before I run it on my actual site. I’m using geotheme 3.07 and now all Spreadsheets are saved in Google spreadsheet prior to upload. I’m using ersion 1.1.2 of BMT.

Hi there folks,
I am looking into the version issue right now. I am not sure if the version in the TT repository is the current version with the wrong name or if it is actually not the updated version. I’ll send an update shortly.
Thanks for all the input,
Jackson

So rather than post patches and try to work through individuals’ issues yesterday, we just burned the midnight oil a bit and got version 1.1.4 ready to go. I am going to go ahead and call this v.1.1.4 beta because the reality is that I really should call each of these releases beta until they have been out for a couple days, I digress…

v1.1.4 beta is important because it fixes the resurfaced category separation bug and adds support for exporting and importing GeoTheme events.

Note: the separator for lists of categories has been changed back to a comma, rather than a “%”.

See the forthcoming documentation for notes on event management. I will be uploading the new package within the hour.

As always, thanks for your patience and support. Please keep the feedback and comments coming.
Jackson

So, I just checked on last time and it really appears that the correct file is uploaded and available. Just to make sure we are on the same page, where specifically do you see that your download is v1.1.2? Also, when you download the .zip and unzip it, how many files are in the folder?
Thank you,
Jackson

Hi, I’m going to http://stiofan.themetailors.com/store/order-status/, clicking on GT Addons Bundle, and downloading. I unzip this and open to find all the products including ‘GeoTheme-Bulk-Management-Tools-v1.1.2′ there is no version 1.1.4, unzipping version 1.1.2 shows both ‘__MACOSX’ and ‘GeoTheme Bulk Management Tools v1.1.2′, ‘GeoTheme Bulk Management Tools v1.1.2′ has 4 files within it.

Okay, if the second file you mentioned, has four files in it, including upload_event.php and download_event.php, you are looking at v1.1.4 – just that for some reason, I am loosing my file names on upload. Anyhow, if those files are present, you have the up-to-date copy. Please go ahead and follow the installation instructions and see how it works.

Also, I have not been able to recreate the issue of images being added multiple times yet. If anyone else is having the issues, please speak up. In the mean time, we will keep looking around and get a hold of you for access to your site if we cannot find anything.
Thanks again,
Jackson

Hi Lyndsy,
There is some issue with the TT store/download manager right now. I just sent an email your way with the script.
Please post any other questions that come up and I’ll get back to you right away,
Jackson

Hi there Dave,
What version of the script are you using? What are you doing when the error occurs. Just visiting a page or trying to upload/download? If just visiting a page, does it occur on the upload and download pages?
Thanks,
Jackson

I understand your frustration and I am really sorry that the script is continuing to give you issues. We have put a huge amount of time into this code over the last months and it is working for most people. Many of the fixes that we have coded over the last few versions have been focused on your specific case and problems, so please understand that we are taking your issues seriously and dedicated a lot of hours to getting it resolved.

Before your previous messages, I actually had no idea that you were working with a db of 10k. Not saying you did not say it previously, you probably did, but I guess I missed it. Anyway, that could absolutely have an impact, as we have never tested with more than around 2k entries and more typically with many fewer. An omission on our part, I can see now, but we will get going large-volume testing that right away.

Anyway, the script is quite stable right now and working on a good number of sites. I am more than happy to dig into your site and code and find the exact problem. We want to make this work for everyone, period. However, there are no silver bullets, we just need to give it due diligence, find the issue and fix it. Anyway, if you want a refund, you are of course welcome to it, however we are more than willing to see this through and get you up and running.

I will email you with a couple more questions about your install shortly.

Okay, that all sounds pretty run-of-the-mill… Really though, the mexican restaurant thing I am pretty sure is just this… that there was a static URL for our testing left in the upload.php file and it was part of a redirect, so after running your uploaded, you were redirected to our test site rather than to your own site and you would have been looking at our list of Ecuadorian restaurants (which was not a private page at the time because we had a number of devs accessing it. Anyway, as far as I understand the problem, none of that should have ended up in your DB – you were basically just uploading your stuff, then being redirected to a results page on our site rather than yours.

Regarding the 10,000 listings, you are KILLING me… this is exactly why we made this script in the first place and now it’s not working for the exact situations in which it is needed. Ahhrg…

We’re working hard to get it done and out. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks for following up about the DB stuff.
Jackson
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Posted January 12th, 2012
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I’m pulling your chain, not unhappy at all but I do need it to work asap, can’t take the risk of playing around in the backend really, the listings are down to 8,200 i think now, but were having to do all our work online which is not quick…

Whats the way forward buddy?

Don’t want a refund, I can setup up a staging area but it takes time….

Hahaha Dave… good call on that one. 24/7 web dev/support is screwing with my head I guess:p Oh well… In the end both are correct. Working with large databases is exactly why we made the script, but we have never tested with one *that* big. Anyhow, sorry for the mixed messages. Putting together a huge db and doing some testing is on the to-do list for today/tomorrow. I think it is totally reasonable that you want to be able to do this and fits with our goal, we just need to take the code to the next level to get it working.

In other news, v1.1.5 will be out tomorrow or later today. It has a fix for how categories are applied to posts. Before, places were only given categories that were specified in the CSV. Now, they are also given all parent categories of any categories, listed in the CSV. This is how the front-end place add page works and is a necessary function for some front-end sorting features, like pagination.

All the best and sorry to come off as a bit defensive, I keep missing your emoticons until after sending my responses:)

Hey Dave and everyone else,
Just wanted to post a quick update. We are getting into the testing for high-volume sites, but it is going to be a bit of an overhaul to our whole code I think. Anyway, we are working on it and will have a initial release out as quick as possible.
In other news, the category fix is not quite ready for primetime, but should be within two days, at which point I’ll post it here.
Thanks a lot everyone!
Jackson

replied by email. but I’ll post here in case anyone else is interested…

Hi there Vin,

Thanks for getting in touch. The script is doing great. It is in active development and we are adding features and fixing bugs every week. We generally subscribe to the RERO model, or release early, release often. This is of course not a substitute for thorough testing, which we put as our first priority, but just means that we wanted to make the most basic functionality available to the public as quickly as possible, followed by quick feature additions based on user feedback. This is all in contrast to assuming that we knew what every potential user wanted, then coding a bunch of features that no one ever used.

If you read back through the comments or release notes, you’ll get a good idea of where the plugin is at. We have another release slated for this week, that adds an important fix for how categories are added to posts. Next week, we will have another version out with support for extra large databases – with thousands of posts.

Anyhow, we would be happy to have you on board. If you have any other questions, please ask away.

Hi again folks,
I will be submitting version 1.1.5 to TT within the hour. The only change is an overhaul to how categories are assigned to places. You can see the details in the changelog. Dave (and other super-users;), we are working hard on finding a good solution for extra-large databases. I’m aiming for this time next week, but let’s see how it goes. Could be sooner or…
Best regards,
Jackson

Yep, sorry for the downtime. The last update fell through the cracks with the TT admins. I just shot them an email last night and they took care of it this morning.
Thanks for heads up yesterday Dave. I probably would not have noticed for another couple days;)
Making progress on high-volume databases improvements. Expect something around the end of next week.
Jackson

Great Vinlim. Thanks for the +1. Always good to know that we are working on something that more than just Dave will use;-)
We are working on getting v1.1.6 out the door by this coming Friday.
Thanks,
Jackson

Hi there folks,
Version 1.1.6beta is out and being tested by our small group of beta testers. Assuming it works well for everyone there, I will post it to TT this evening.
Hope everyone had a great weekend,
Jackson

Hello again folks,
So we ran into some last minute issues in our beta testing pool and had to go back to the drawing board with the large volume handling. We are working hard on this and will have an update out shortly.
Hope everyones’ week is going great!
Jackson

I’ve used till the moment the default import function. This is not working properly with special caracters from UTF8 as “Ñ” eñes or “tildes (áéíóú).
Does the plugin manage this correctly? If it is, I’m purchasing it now!

Hi there Frank,
Yes, GT Bulk Management Tools does support tildes and special characters. Not to take away from my own sales though, I am 99% sure the default importer also supports special characters and that it is actually Excel’s saving function that strips them. If you look back through the comments in for GT BMT, you should see a short conversation about this with more details and possible fixes. I would be that there is also some good information on the forum.
Thanks for your interest and if you are still interested in our script, we would love to have you on board.
Jackson

I’ve purchased the plugin, Really seems awesome. Anyway, I’m finding a little trouble when trying to download the csv file: 404 not found, as it tries to go to /download.csv, not finding it. ¿Any clue on this? I’ve done all the steps said in the guide and all seems to go smooth step for the download step.

Thanks for the props. I am really happy with the plugin as well. We use it on a weekly or daily basis on our GT site and have tweaked it a lot to make it a really useful tool for us and folks here.

Regarding the 404 error. I have seen two possible reasons for this. First, is setting the download page to private, then trying to access it while signed in to WP with a user that does not have permission to see that invisible page Second, is that your permalinks are using a configuration that does not use page names, in which case your page will not reside at yoursite.com/download, but at a URL determined by your permalink settings. The easy way to visit the page in this case is to simple open the page in the WP-Admin editor and click “View Page”. That will take you to the actual URL.

Would love to hear if this works and if not, of course, just write back here and we’ll get it sorted out for you.
Cheers,
Jacskon

Great Frank,
Thanks a lot for reporting back and really glad you found the issue/solution. Hopefully having this posted here will be helpful for anyone else that runs into a similar issue.
Thanks and have fun!
Jackson

Hi there folks,
Just wanted to post a quick update. We are still working on the very large database handling. We spent a long time working on our current beta version and had it working with most installs, but a few testers reported problems that we still have not been able to trace or solve effectively. Anyway, we are still working away at this and will have a release out within a week.
In the mean time, if anyone has a very large database (at least a couple thousand entries) that they would be willing to share with us for testing purposes, it would be very helpful to have a bigger variety for debugging.
Also, if anyone would like to join our beta testing group, please just send your name and email address to jackson@reneweb.net
Thanks,
Jackson

Hi, just wondering if I’d be able to use this add-on to import data from my current database (not Geotheme).
Would it be possible to download a blank csv then populate it myself with the data from my current site, then upload the csv?

Also, would it allow me to add in Post Custom Fields which are associated with my places and events?

Regarding your first question, absolutely. That is exactly what this script does. You just need to download the sample CSV, populate it in Excel, Numbers, etc. upload it and done. Then if you want to manage the places in bulk later, all you need to do is download the CSV, edit it and re-upload it and your changes will take effect.

Regarding your second question, we do not currently support custom fields, but I would love to hear a quick description how you (or anyone else) envision this working in a best case scenario. I think it would be a good candidate for our roadmap and likely something that would not be too hard to implement.

I’m in a new ‘problem’, surely a stupid one. I need to link image for the place gallery via this bulk script. I’ve uploaded the images to a certain folder (with correct rights) and set in the IMAGE1, IMAGE2,…. the absolut url to this images….but the gallery is not showing. No images are shown for the place. Surely there a step I’m missing…Any help would be appreciated.

Hi Jackson! Thanks for your plugin! I just bought it.
it is working but I have issues with Excel. It is not recognizing my cyrillic letters, while when I am opening it in notepad, I can see them good.
possibly you have discussed it in your comments section here, but it is pretty hard to read all the 140 comments without search possibility.
Could you please copy all the discussion in to the geotheme forum, would be much easier to find really needed things!

Best regards, Yerbol.
P.s. and, what about 1.1.6 update? is it cooming soon?
update: I solved my problem by searching google: how to change coding in excel to UTF-8

Regarding the Russian characters, I believe that this is related to Excel’s export capabilities. Maybe try another spreadsheet editor, like Google Docs, or Google search for “russian characters in Excel”

Please take a look and tell me if these solutions solve your issues. If not, please send any more questions my way.

Thank you very much!
the excel problem is solved- by using notepad++ then saving to UTF-8 and setting cyrillic chars and then it is editable in Excel))
I thought that I will import the cats by phpmyadmin, but now, I will try your plugin!

Hi,
I’ve just purchased this add-on and have a question about uploading events.
When entering a new event, do I add the start/end date/time in the appropriate field? If so, what is the format needed?
I’ve downloaded the CSV file which includes the few (4) events already entered, but can’t see anything populated in the date/time fields, which is why I want to check this is correct.

Ok, I’ve just tried a test upload including a new event – I didn’t fill in all the fields, but for some reason it is copying details for some fields from other events. It doesn’t even look like it is doing a direct copy of another event.

I’ve just downloaded the CSV again and it seems to have updated the first record which was on that file, rather than creating a new record.
I have obviously done something wrong – what do I actually need to do so that it creates a new event record?

Thanks for purchasing our script and for getting in touch. Sorry to hear that you are having issues already. The event support is relatively new and it is not impossible that some bugs still exist, although I am surprised that this has not cropped up with other users or in or pre-release testing. Anyway, we will try to reproduce the issue based on your description and see what we can do.

Another thing I noticed last night was that I suddenly had new place categories appear. I’m sure I was only testing the events upload, but it seems it has taken the categoties listed in the file and created place categories on it. I checked the event categories and it hadn’t created any new ones there.

We have been unable to work the bulk management tool! (we’re newbies really)
but we followed the instructions step by step, downloaded the CSV file, edited it (just deleted some of the sample data that comes with the theme) and repuload the file to our private upload folder that we created.

Then…… nothing happens…..nothing changes, nothing gets updated….

I know we are missing something, but not sure what… is there a step we’re missing? do you have a detailed step by step process you can share with us

Hi there Shourayak,
I just reread over your issue and have a question – have you actually tried editing any fields, rather than just deleting data. The reason I ask is that uploading a blank field to a field that already has data, is treated as a “non-update” of that field. Please try, changing a title, content, etc. and see if those changes are reflected in the database/site.
Please tell me how it goes, as we are trying to track down all bugs and fix them up.
Thanks!
Jackson

It seems that there is a problem with the upload for Events, am i right? I am assigning PostCategory to the items but this aren’t actually being stored, no categories are assigned to the event. Neither the start and end dates….
Any fix for this?

I am getting a Proxy error when uploading csv files. The upload will still work, but nothing will display in the table on the download page. Proxy Error The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server. Update: This is working with small files of lass than 200kb but not with files larger than 200kb.

Hi folks,
We’ve had a number of development issues with the script that are eating into our time a lot. We are aware of the last few questions posted here and will respond to them individually shortly.
Thanks,
Jackson

This would be great! I was starting to create the event import by myself cause it actually urges to the project. thanks for the support and can’t wait for the new release. post asap you achieve the mods,….

Do we know anything about the new version with the amended event import? I have the project stopped until I can manage the event import….so any clue or dates for the release would be really appreciated ..
Thanks for your effort.

Thanks for the purchase! Sorry to hear you are having problems downloading the script. As ThemeTailors is a marketplace, I do not actually have any control at all over customers’ access to downloads. Your best bet is to get ahold of Paola via the About page: http://themetailors.com/who-are-we/

All of that said, I am happy to send the files to you directly to get you headed the same direction, but that will not help you with updates or other purchases, so I’d definitely recommend getting in touch with the TT admins about your issue.

Hi – I apologize if the answer to this question is somewhere. I promise I looked . I downloaded my existing places and then wanted to upload some changes to the existing places and add a new place altogether. I left the place_id blank on the new place. What happens is that the information for the new place overwrites the last existing place in my download file. So if I have 4 places and add one, I end up with 4 places only the new place is now in the first row and the previous 4th row place has been “pushed out”. What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance!

Hi there Mellewel,
Thanks for getting in touch and also for doing a bit of research before posting here. You are correct that this hasn’t been mentioned before. I was able to reproduce it in the newest version of GeoTheme yesterday and we found a fix today. We have a bit more testing to do and we’ll release the fix in a new version tomorrow.
For everyone else waiting for fixes, we are making progress on the other bugs and feature requests out there and our development pace is back to normal.
Thanks!
Jackson

Hi again – It seems that the plugin is no longer working with the latest geotheme (3.2) release. Is that the case? It disappeared from my plugins list and when I went to re-install, the install failed because no valid plugins were found. Thanks in advance for any help.

Thank you so much for your patience and understanding with this. I really appreciate your politeness. I am very sorry that it has taken so long to fix the event issues. These last fixes have been a series of rabbit holes and a lot of alterations were/are needed. All that, not to mention that the most recent GT broke some of our new functionality.

Anyhow, I just put a different and more competent programmer in charge of the project and we will release 2 updates this coming week and one the week after. I believe that the second of those this coming week will address your issues.

Hi there folks,
I am about to upload v1.1.6, which takes care of place upload bugs related to GT3.1.3 compatibility and the event upload bugs found by Frank.
Please give the update a spin and report back with further issues, etc.
Thanks a ton everyone!
Jackson

Hi there Jay,
Thanks for getting in touch and for purchasing the BMT. Please contact the TT admin Paolo about the updates/downloads. We have no real control over customers’ access to purchased scripts. So, if you have not been receiving update notifications, that is something that Theme Tailors needs to deal with. You can get a hold of Paolo at: paolotaiani@gmail.com
Thanks,
Jackson

Thanks for purchasing the script! Can you please send a more detailed overview of the steps you’ve already taken and exactly what error you are getting or exactly what is not working? Based on those descriptions, we will get you up and running:)

i just noticed that i missed one of the instruction about choosing “template from the templates drop-down while editing the page”.
I only have the default template, add event form etc, but how do I create the new templates in the drop down specifically for the plugin?

I just bought this too and followed the exact steps. All looks well but in the “Download Place” stage, I get the error:

404 (Page Not Found) Error
If you’re the site owner, one of two things happened:
1) You entered an incorrect URL into your browser’s address bar, or
2) You haven’t uploaded content.
If you’re a visitor and not sure what happened:
1) You entered or copied the URL incorrectly or
2) The link you used to get here is faulty.
(It’s an excellent idea to let the link owner know.)

Please try visiting the page via the “view page” link in the Admin/edit screen for the “Download Place” page. Depending on your permalink structure, this may be the best way to find the actual usable URL.

Please tell me if this works for you, as we’ll want to find a better way to describe the installation and usage if this is giving folks issues.

Great. Glad that worked out anyway. Regarding the broken download in Firefox, that is just an issue with how different browsers handle download/file links. In Firefox, you need to right click on the download link and “save file/target as” rather than just normal/left click it. Changing this is on the table, but not for a version or two as it is not particularly inconvenient. The issue with the header links not using the correct URLs is an issue that we are working on fixing though. For the time being, just keep track of the actual URLs so you have easy access to each page.

2) For new places, all you need is a title. You can leave everything else blank if you want. Next time you download the database, the ID, permalink, date, and a few others will be automatically filled out. The rest you can edit in the future.

Understood. And in my test it appeared that some additional broken data was also created. How do I avoid this in the future or is it the nature of the beast?

Also what happens if I upload new places data without the existing places already from the website? Does it add the new data without erasing the old? Or does it add the new places data but erases the old? If so, then is it best practice to always upload new and existing places data?

About the broken data, I don’t know what exactly you are referencing. If you can go into a bit more detail, I can offer some advice.

The best practice is to add new places to the end of a downloaded version of your current DB. That said, give the other option a shot. As far as I know, uploading a spreadsheet with only new listings to an existing database will simply add the new listings to those that already exist. Obviously you should make good, easy to restore backups before testing this.

And I’ll just stick to the best practices of “add new places to the end of a downloaded version of your current DB”.

Regarding broken data, the import creates additional places listings made from existing data to which I have to manually trash. And then it takes the existing places titles and add its as a category to which I have to manually delete again…

Hi there Mellewel,
I believe that problems with special characters and accents are related to the spreadsheet software you are using and how your exporting the CSV. Please look back through the comments as there are a couple conversations that relate to this.
Please send a note back my way with whether or not you find something.
Thanks!
Jackson

We have recently bought Geotheme (currently using version 3.2.1) and additionally we purchased the Bulk Uploading script offered on your website (Theme Tailors) with which we are having troubles.

After the installation of the Bulk upload script and creating the respective pages (upload places, upload events, download places and download events) We have had many problems to upload content doing it exactly as it says in download places.

Besides, if we do it the way explained in download places, the information is uploaded wrongly and all cells (information) are put in a wrong order, also these pages have a button that says “download the CSV template” to use as a guide, but in the installation of the bulk upload script there is no file .CSV (so we cannot download any CSV).

We urge a quick an useful solution to this issue because we need to use the service and the script as soon as possible and we are running are of time.

Hi there folks,
I will be uploading v1.1.8 shortly. It includes a fix that was breaking the upload of downloaded CSVs. In order to avoid the problem now, first download a new version of your database from your download page. Do not use a previously downloaded CSV (or if you need to, change the ID column header to “id” lowercase).
Thanks!
Jackson

Something is going on with the ID column for this script. When the ID column is filled with a value, it will not upload listings. When I clear out the ID column, it will upload listings but assign a random number. Once, it does that, you can’t view the listing from the backend (“view place”). The listing shows on the front end but with the wrong city ID.

I return to try to make my project survive!
I’ve tried the new version, but I still don’t see the date fields (Event start date, Event start time, Event end date, Event end time) issues resolved in the Event upload import.
Are them actually fixed??

Hi there Fran!
Good hearing from you again but bad to hear that you are still having issues with the event upload. We had completely taken care of that issue a couple versions back, but maybe it has returned. I mentioned it to our main dev for the project yesterday and he will be looking at it tomorrow or Thursday, which should be quickly followed by a bug-fix if we are able to to reproduce it. If he cannot reproduce it, I would love to Skype with you and see what we can resolve in real time.
Thanks,
Jackson

Is there anyone here who can tell me if you had a good experience purchasing this script? I was looking thru this 14 pages but the only thing I can see are: error, bugs, not working, etc. Is that really worth to buy it? What is the policy for refunds?

Welcome to the comments and thanks for your interest in our script. I can give you a few general answers and if others want to chime in iwth their experiences, great.

We have certainly had some bugs during the last months, but the reality of a forum like this is people mostly only speak up when they are having issues, so that is mostly what you will see while browsing. You will also see that I have been very present and responsive the whole time, but that some releases have taken time to get out and some have been released quickly. Point being, our support is good and the script has actually worked a lot of the time.

Regarding the current state of affairs, the script works perfectly for place uploads/downloads right now – I just did Skype support chats with two customers yesterday, one of whom was able to resolve their issue as we chatted by a simple tweak to their workflow. Another member here, Fran, just reported that there is still a bug with the events upload – so there may be a fix in need there – we have not checked it yet.

Lastly, I just wanted to say that we are actually restructuring our company right now and one of the results of that will be quicker development cycles for this script, so we are only headed up. Regarding refunds, we are happy to give them within PayPal’s refund window, which is 3 months I believe (not positive).

I installed the GeoTheme plugin and accepted the sample data, + purchased a database of all companies within the CITY that the website is about

my question is now that i have the CSV with the headers, i feel comfortable getting the data in, however there will be content areas blank
such as geo_lattitude and geo_longitude + permalinks + etc

Question:
- I imagine the BLANK areas are not an issue, is there any fields that REQUIRE a value?
- once i UPLOAD the CSV can i visit them withing the admin and set the geo_lattitude and geo_longitude
- I plan to put ALL the companies into the site, then visit and/or contact companies to have them UPGRADE to a featured add

I am interested to hear from anyone using GeoTheme in a smaller town pop 100,000 and how they got subscribers

Our script is only for importing/exporting places and events – not categories or cities. You will need to create cities manually or create a script for that if you need to import 1400 cities. If you mean 1400 places, then our script will work beautifully.

Guys, to add Neighborhoods to your normal geotheme upload csv, just add a column at the back with the header : post_hood_id . Also I have exported with this and it does not show the Neigborhoods when you export, but if you go to any place and go down to all your custom fields you will find that post_hood_id is there and filled in even if you import this back it will not change the hood and keep what you had in there. Good Luck. Im now just waiting to see why on earth can I only export 2000 places and not all my places.

The deadline for presenting my project is over and I have not been able to workaround a solution for the event bulk upload with the date bugs, issue which I’ve been commenting here time ago. Now I am actually in a hurry to implement these and I am afraid the solution is not coming since I had no response to my last comment considering this issue again. Please I need to know if this bug can be solved or if I can work out any solution with you via Skype. My 1000+ events ar not uploading correctly and my web feels empty .

Thanks for the work but now I am really under pressure. Need some feedback on these, please.

Hello… I just purchased the Bulk Mgmt Tool and so far, it successfully updated 500 records during my first import.

My questions is: Can an existing record be flagged as “deleted” within the CSV so that when its uploaded, that record (or records) will be deleted from the WP database. (For example, if I accidentally add 100 records, can I download the CSV and then edit those line items to be deleted during the next upload…?)

Hi Jackson – not sure how or why but these two lines contained a typo in the code ‘n’ instead of ‘m’
$downloadurl = get_hone_url().”/download.csv”;
$siteurl = get_hone_url();

Also an observation – might be a good idea to consider dropping a password protection screen into the download as anyone knowing of this tool can just navigate directly to the page and download all your data – no scraping required.

I am having an issue uploading my csv, and have some questions:
the issue is it only is displaying the same info i downloaded, the other entries are not displaying, when i did the simulate it showed the items

- the column A, i see consecutive # in there, should i continue this?
- the “ID” + “PERMALINKS” column, i assume thes values are added when uploaded
- the “DATE” column, does it need a date in there? i assumed it would be filled
- the “IMAGE1″ column, i entered just the filenames in there, will i be prompted to upload, in my permalinks there is a date satmap, will this be sorted out on upload

Sorry could be a general question, however I download the csv file and populated it with my data
so now i am ready for an upload of 2500 line items,

but first have a couple of questions,
- so you mention if the “id” field is empty upon upload the field will be automatically populated with #’s
- the “date” field should i put it the date of the upload? and follow the existing format
- I imagine the “id” and “permalink” fields are done upon upload
- I do not see a field for “Map Zoom Level” i usually set it to 15 however i am not seeing this field,

I can only export 2000 listings, nothing more there must be some kind of bug in this, also on the download page there seems to be loads of line breaks of some sort because listings is not directly under each other. anyway I need a fix asap I need to edit some listings but the one’s I would like to edid is not exporting at all. thx

Hi,
I know Fran7 has mentioned issues with the event dates being imported. I just wanted find out whether whatever issues Fran7 had have been resolved.
I’m planning to offer uploading event dates as a service to my clients, I just want to be sure it works well before I start to offer it. I also don’t want to try testing it on my database if there is the chance of there being a known problem.

I have just buy it and it doesn’t work for me.
It tried to download a file (download.csv) and this does not exist.
What to do ?
I have WordPress 3.5 and Geotheme 323
I have quite 7000 places to backup, can it works?
Thanks for answer

I have 10,000 place listings. When I upload from the .csv, only about 580 records update each time. Is there some kind of limit set somewhere? I end up having to split the file into 500 listings per file but this takes a long time…..

I have about 10.000 records. When I do bulk upload, I only can upload around 580 records at a time. I don’t get an error, so the only way to get everything uploaded is to do it in batches of 580 or less. Then when I try to download all places, I only get to first 2000 records. Is there some transaction limit ? What can I do to download the entire database?

Our next update will allow for databases in the thousands. We have been working on this feature for a while. Please look for it in late February. I will leave a note here for you when it is ready also.

First off, I’d test out the plugin and learn how to use it on a secondary site before working on your live site. As this plugin deal s with the Database, there is potential for real damage. Also remember to do backups.

Regarding your question, your best bet is to first download the events DB, add your new events to the end of the CSV and re-upload it. This has the least chance of error. We do not support custom fields in download or upload. Sorry.

About linking to a place, I do not believe that you can, other than from within an event description (as a text link), but that would be a good question for the GeoTheme forum.

The bulk import of facebook and twitter urls did not work. I downloaded the csv file, inserted the http:// … addresses in the appropriate column, uploaded it again, but the information is not saved (no error messages). Am I doing something wrong or not-allowed?

Similarly, I uploaded images to the site, and then inserted the urls in the “image 1″ column, with no results. The import seems to ignore all urls.

I have bought the Bulk Management tools and it worked until I installed the wpml for multi lingual.
Now I get and fatal error when upload.
If I deactivate the wpml I can upload but they are not visible when I activate wpml again.

Hi, I’m interested in this tool. Do I need to add lat/long for all places or does the tool automatically assign the google map lat/long based on the address provided? Hopefully it does which would be a huge plus.

Here is no respons. Last time the developer answered any question was in February.
I bought the module and have a problem and asked for help but are looking for other options instead.
So help yourself and save the money and time.

@pawscoop It will not automatically add long and lat, you can click set address in admin after and that will set , or put you addresses into a simple list and use http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/geocoder/ it will chuck back the geo location in a way that is simple to copy back to your spreadsheet.

Only answering cause the Developer seems to have gone on a long Holiday
I have not got this far yet but it has been reported that only 2000 can be down loaded, I was going to test and see If I could solve this once I get over 2000 records.

Uploading seems less of an issue but I would be wary of doing 25k at a time as you might run into php memory issues, I would split them up into smaller parts and test to see how far you can push it.

With regards to records, when uploading if you do not enter the id then it will create a new record, if you know the id of a record you can edit that record.

Obiously if you are not editing the record then don’t upload it.

I think that although this tool has issues it is still worth the money and has saved me loads of time.

I was really not so concerned with the downloading but the uploading has been a huge headache using the geotheme option I even hired a database specialist and he too had a hard time loading the data sets in large numbers. So I think I will give it a try and load smaller sets at a time.

I cannot upload the CSV with non-latin characters (Thai, Russian, Hindi, etc.). The Place Title and Place Description are empty. If I add the entries manually via Admin, everything is fine.

I also doublechecked the the collation of wp_post table and wp_postmeta in phpmyadmin. Both tables and their fields have UTF-8 collation.

I have the same UTF-8 problem with the native GT Place/Event Bulk Upload tool. When I add a place manually via the admin or frontend everything is okay but as soon as I use the bulk import tool, all UTF/non-latin characters are gone. For example if you have a place title as a mix of UTF8 and regular latin letters then only latin characters are recorded in the database.

I used the ‘iconv’ function in a couple of GT scripts so that I can see the non-latin letters in the output: php _e(iconv(‘windows-1251′,’utf-8′ ,’non-latin letters’)) maybe there is a same problem in the bulk upload script as well.

This issue has come up a couple times before here in the comments and each time the issue was resolved through Excel export settings I believe. Please try tweaking those and if you don’t have luck, take a quick look through the comments.

I’m trying to download/export my events but the event start and end dates along with event start and end times are not being populated on the downloaded file.
How can I get these fields to be populated?
Thanks.

I updated to Geotheme 3.3.2. When doing this the php files for this tool were overwritten – so I added them back. When I go into my pages for download place, download event, etc. – the templates are not listed in the template drop-down. How do I resolve?

The templates being listed should be entirely independent of GT. Make sure you put the PHP files in the correct directory and try refreshing the page edit screen before checking the template dropdown menu.

Custom fields are not supported. The categories should not be impacted by identical names. First download the CSV of your full database and do your editing on that document, noting the category structure. As long as you keep the structure the same as the download, you should be fine on the upload.

Sorry for the inconvenience. We are planning a new version that will handle larger DBs, but it has been delayed many times and I do not have a good ETA at the moment. In the mean time, I believe that you need to contact the site admins via the About->Contact menu for a refund.

Just FYI, the “Download” page didn’t work for me but I renamed it to “Downloads” and now I am able to download the places file. Probably some issue on my end.

Now my current issue, when I go to the Downloads page I see a perfectly formatted page, I download the csv but cannot import it into Excel because it recognizes the commas in the fields and cuts the descriptions into several cells screwing up the formatting throughout the whole file.

Are the values escaped by any delimiter? How can I open this file in Excel and populate it with my data for upload?

We have your plugin installed and have the private pages set up as you advise in your instructions. We can see the content on the download page.

When we try to get a download of the places from the download page, we click the “Download CSV” button, some data seems to be collected, but we get no download appearing. there is no dialogue box asking where to save, nor any download notification showing. Nothing seems to download at all.

At the top of the page, there is a lot of script showing between the ‘download place” heading and the line of controls. This is what we see:

I Can only download 577 listings!? They DO show up on private download page but the csv only has 577.
Updating to V 1.1.8 did not help. Also the “line in download.php (around line 313) that sets the post download limit to 1000,” you mentioned in earlier posts does not exist(anymore?) Some information on this matter would be highly appreciated! Thanks

I am wanting to convert data on one of my websites FROM Geothemes to another theme. The site is small and doesn’t need the power of Geothemes. Can I use this program to convert all my place listings to just regular WordPress categories to be used by another theme?

Yes, you could use our plugin for part of that task. Essentially this tool will let you download all of your posts and their associated categories as a CSV. You can then parse out the categories names or anything else you need in Excel, format it appropriately for and another importing script and bring the data in.

Thanks for the quick reply Jackson. I am specifically interested in being able to export all of my place listings since they seem to reside in the Geothemes theme and edit them somehow and bring them back in as normal wordpress posts. If I change themes in WP to a non-Geothemes I no longer see the place listings and I want to keep them using a different theme. Will it download the place listings for me to see, edit, and import as regular WP posts?
Thank you.

Hi there, I just purchased this today and it doesn’t seem to be working. I downloaded my entires as a csv, edited them and then uploaded them, but they don’t reflect any of my changes. There don’t seem to be any error messages – it just displays the data in a table, showing no changes.

I’m using excel – do I need to save the csv with any particular settings?

Sorry for the delay. Can you please tell me which fields you are editing. Have you tried editing just a single field, like a place title, and then uploading? If not, please do and see if that much is working for you.

Hi guys, thanks for getting back to me! I have downloaded my places as a CSV and then I edited a couple of titles and tried to re-upload. No dice. No error messages, nothing. I’ll try to edit just one field and see if that works.

Also, thanks to Tim for the response, but one of the reasons that I purchased this plugin was so that I could keep using Excel. Here’s a quote from the comments:

“Hi there Peter,
This script is for bulk editing your GeoTheme places and all related meta-data. It is especially useful if you are trying to add a whole database of places or just want to be able to quickly edit your places database in Excel, Numbers, etc., rather than clicking through the WordPress’s graphic interface to change hundreds or thousands of posts.
If you need to export your entire WP database, there are a ton of plugins and server-side scripts that will do just that for you, but most of those will provide a limited ability to edit the database as a CSV or to easily edit only places and GeoTheme info.
If you have any other questions at all, please post them here and I will be happy to chat.
Thanks,
Jackson”

Ok, I tried using only Open Office and it works, however, I still would prefer to use Excel. When I open the file in Excel, I edit a title – I can preview the file before I upload and the changes are there. However, on import, the title is unchanged.

Excellent! Google Drive is definitely the best available option in my opinion. The ability for collaboration and dynamic interfacing with other web services makes it a really powerful tool for this use case.

Are you still having this issue? As long as the template files are uploaded to your GT theme folder (not child) and that theme is the active theme or the theme being called by your child theme, it will work.
Thanks

Hi, how is it different or better if I import with built in tool?
If I have 10 000 places with cities and zip codes will it automatically create all cities in geotheme for them? what about states and neighborhoods?

It is different because beyond just uploading new entries, you can update existing entries in bulk. So, you can download your live DB, edit hundreds of listings and re-upload that same doc and the BMT will update only the changed fields for each place.

Regarding Cities, they will be created on upload if they are no exact matches in your system.

OK, so let’s say if I have clean Geotheme with no cities, I ll upload 1000 places with addresses and zip codes. Will it automatically add all these cities and create geo coordinates for them to display on the map?

ok, I want to buy it, but still don’t understand of it will work like I need.
Do I have to assign city ID to every place am going to add?
What are the columns in csv? could you send me a sample to idenis.sh@gmail.com

Hi, I’ve successfully created the downloads page, made it private and used the Download Places template to be able to access the CSV info, but when I attempt to download the CSV file I’m getting a Failed – Server Problem error. Any idea what could be causing this?

When I tried to upload the CSV file to my AIT Theme directory it wasn’t really the data I was hoping for. Do you need to disable plugins or do anything else to download the CSV file? The size of my file for around 200 different Geotheme places was just about 40 kb. Is that about the right size at least?

Hi’ I have just purchased and have completed everything to download places CSV (Click “Download CSV” in the top menu and select a download destination).
It is going to a url …./download.csv with a page of all the listings in plain text and doesnt allow me to download a csv file or ask for a destination.
I have tried firefox, IE and Chrome and it’s not a browser issue. Why isn’t this working?

Thanks for your reply, So the ‘download CSV’ file button doesnt work? May want to change it in the instructions.
I found that the save target only works in IE.
When I saved the file, it has this character ‘Â ’ throughout the file in titles, content and email links, probably in more but Im not going through it all. This would take days to go through and remove them. I looked at my directory listing and compared and these characters do not appear, so it seems something is wrong with the Bulk Management tool.
Can you please give me a solution or did I just get a fault copy?
Thank you

Unfortunately I have an issue. I made the changes in the download.php and in the wpconfig.php.
Worked on the CSV with Open Office.
I have about 2.300 listings. But the import doesn’t work. After the upload of the CSV nothing happened.
Is there a way to find out, what could be wrong with my file?

Possible problems:
1. In the content fields are often more than 255 characters. Problem?
2. I created one more than the three custom fields defined in the download.php. Problem?
3. The whole file has 9.5 MB. That seems to be much two big to me. Problem?

Hi Frank,
First place to check the server as it might be a memory issue, look at the error logs.
If you see nothing there take a small sample of you sheet and test before using a large sheet.
If you are using multi select as custom fields then you can’t import them as the are stored in serialized strings.

Hi Tim, thanks
I solved the problem before. There were some paragraphs in some fields which caused a lot of mess in the datas and blew up the size of the file.
But I still have problems.I already had modified the memory. The custom fields don’t cause a problem.
If I upload the complete sheet it appears ‘error’ on the upload page (left corner top). Using less datas it works, but only about 23-26 listings. The imported listings look fine.
I have no other choice to do it now manually, but for future imports it would be really helpful to import the whole sheet. Have an idea?

I have increased the server time?? setting with my host, is there anything else I should be doing to get this working,
I can see the page loading but it never finishes loading and that’s the problem.
Thanks for your help

Hi. On step 3 of the install instructions their is no “download” template in the dropdown for the “Download” page I created. The templates I see are Download Place and Download Event. Should I use Download Place?

Hi,
not sure if that has something to do but after upgrade to geotheme version 3.6 I have the problem, that the bulk management download for events & places are able to download, BUT the import process is not working. Here is a movie about its problem (http://screencast.com/t/RnuLYRT2YMs)

I need your help to solve this problem to be able to import places and events as well.

I am battling with step 3. Give each new page the corresponding template from the templates drop-down while editing the page. (The download page gets the “download” template, etc.) – These templates aren’t there.